At the far end of this spectrum is the new Skittles.com. For a brief time last week, the Skittles homepage was nothing but a little Skittles navigation widget with a twitter search for “Skittles” in the background. Everything any twitter user had to say about Skittles was up there in real-time. Now, the homepage jumps between Wikipedia’s Skittles entry, the YouTube Skittles Channel, and the Skittles Facebook page. “Pics” links to a Flickr search for “skittles”, and the Twitter search is still under “chatter”.

Now, we know you’re not selling candy. And unlike Skittles you probably don’t have the benefit of total brand recognition. But there’s an important lesson there.

Your audience can spot “marketing” miles away. And they tune it out. Your message is still important and we’ll help you get that across in the right way (it’s classic “show, don’t tell”)–but you’re going to need to sprinkle some student voices around. First-person is in. Total control is out. Authenticity is the new black.